It’s far from a secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2023 is a rudderless ship, veering from film to film with no real greater sense of purpose, and coasting on the goodwill it built up in its first 10 years of box office dominance – even with the critical and financial success of Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. A great number of think pieces have already been written about the mess that Kevin Feige is dealing with, and a great deal more will surely be written as long as Marvel continues to churn out content without any palpable quality control. So going in to The Marvels, even the most die-hard MCU fans would be forgiven for lowering their expectations. Even considering the moderately positive reactions to Captain Marvel from 2019, which survived a wave of misogynistic trolling to gross a billion dollars in receipts, The Marvels perhaps represents the worst instincts of the MCU, and perhaps could solidify the final nail in the superhero coffin.

It’s not just that The Marvels is a bad film (it is), or that it embraces all the worst tendencies of Marvel films, but it almost feels like a lifeless shrug of a film, barely designed to appease the few people that show up out of some misguided sense of loyalty. It’s not entirely the fault of director Nia DaCosta – who co-wrote the screenplay with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik. It’s common knowledge at this point that the credited director of an MCU film is mostly the director in name only, with duties mostly handed over to pre-vis storyboards or some other Feige-adjacent executive.

Carole Danvers (Brie Larson), for all her Superman-like powers, is one of the least explored characters in Marvel, and she’s done no favors by the film’s script. To say her character has no arc in The Marvels would be an understatement. The same can be said of Teyonah Parris’s Monica Rambaeu, who spends the film searching for… a superhero name? At least the film has Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, whose infectious energy and charm is one of the few bright spots.

Marvel films live and die by how interesting their villain is, and the main baddie of The Marvels may be one of the most bland of all time. Again, it’s not entirely the fault of Zawe Ashton, whose Dar-Benn is never given room to breathe, and never really gets a chance to justify her evil plan, or perhaps get us on her side. She’s a Kree who has a long-standing beef with Danvers, and hopes to restore her homeland. That’s it.

There are some positives to be found. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. One of the film’s first scenes shows Khan as she daydreams about her idol Captain Marvel, turning into a loosely sketched animation sequence, calling to mind the fun, zippy nature of Ms. Marvel. Fight sequences are mostly solid and small in scale, and it’s clear that DaCosta enjoyed visualizing the body-swap conundrum that plagues the three heroes throughout the film. And Larson, Vellani, and Parris are generally fun together, gelling in a way that the film desperately needs.

What makes The Marvels so misguided is that, at virtually every turn, it seems to have gone with a “first thought, best thought” mentality. In some ways, you can understand what brought the film there. Consider the sequence around the film’s midpoint, when the Marvels arrive on a planet where its inhabitants communicate only in song and dance. Marvel has never done a musical sequence, so you can see why DaCosta would be drawn to it. But there’s no palpable excitement from anyone either in front of or behind the camera (again, Vellani innocent) that you’re relieved when the conceit is abandoned before long.

There’s a number of well-documented issues at Marvel, from overworked VFX workers to last-minute script changes to an overwhelming amount of content, not to mention the whole Jonathan Majors situation. The Marvels embodies all of those problems in one form or another. (It goes without saying that the visual effects here are terrible, but at this point, that’s like saying Taylor Swift has sold out another concert.) The Marvels is not the first film that requires you to watch at least one of the Disney+ TV series, but it’s more of a requirement here than in past instances.

Marvel films in 2023 almost defy a grading scale; you’ll almost always get out of it what you bring to it. But for behemoths that dominate multiplex screens and cost north of $200 million to produce, you should at least expect the most basic aspects required for films, like character arcs and quantifiable stakes. It’s borderline pointless to get too worked-up about the quality of a superhero film these days, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such blatant apathy from virtually everyone involved in a film as I have with The Marvels.

The Marvels will be released in theaters nationwide on November 10.

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